Component based software environments use granules of software (referred to as “components” or “component instances”) to perform basic functions. Some examples of component based architectures include Java Beans (JB), Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Component Object Model (COM), Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) and derivatives there from.
The functional granularity offered by a plurality of different components provides a platform for developing a multitude of more comprehensive tasks. For example, a business application that graphically presents the results of calculations made to an individual's financial records (e.g., amortization of interest payments, growth in income, etc.) may be created by logically stringing together: 1) an instance of a first component that retrieves an individual's financial records from a database; 2) an instance of a second component that performs calculations upon financial records; and, 3) an instance of a third component that graphically presents financial information.
Moreover, within the same environment, another business application that only graphically presents an individual's existing financial records may be created by logically stringing together: 1) another instance of the first component mentioned just above; and, 2) another instance of the third component mentioned above. That is, different instances of the same component may be used to construct different applications. The number of components within a particular environment and the specific function(s) of each of the components within the environment are determined by the developers of the environment.
Components may also be created to represent separate instances of persistent data (e.g., a first component that represents a first row of database information, a second component that represents a second row of database information, etc.).
Passivation is a feature that component based architectures have been known to have. Passivation is a technique for saving memory space within a computing system by moving components that have not been used recently from memory to another storage location (e.g., a disk drive). If a component is needed again it is moved back to memory from the storage location. A process referred to as serialization has been used to implement passivation. Serialization breaks down a component into a byte stream and then stores the byte stream into the database.